by amelia seidel

Hey!

You found this post because you are on our website, cool! Maybe just perusing (awesome, welcome), maybe looking for an online piece or print book that we’ve published (wow literally thank you -- this is why we do what we do), or maybe you’re wondering about any declarations we’ve made since the current Black Lives Matter protests have begun. If you’re here for the latter, congrats, you found it.

I say found because we won’t be tweeting this out. While it is so very important for organizations to publicize their social promises, I don’t think that your timeline would benefit from our personal broadcasting right now. I would rather spread and share other voices who have been doing this work for years, and let the words we choose to publish (retweet) be representative of what we believe in and are fighting for.

While tenderness is at the moment run by one cis white woman (two, Zoë is just on sabbatical), we recognize simultaneously that white silence does equate to violence and that it would be a distraction from the Black Lives Matter protests for us to take up any more space than necessary right now.

Moving forward, our mission doesn’t change because we absolutely fucking meant it when we said “tenderness is a space that was created to uplift the voices of LGBTQ and POC writers. we want to find ways to bring those writers closer to the center of the literary conversation. we want to find ways to get them paid. we want a better world. we’re trying to get to it.”

We know that our masthead has no Black people. We aren’t going to proposition anyone for the sake of optics, because we don’t feel that is genuine. We will continue to invite guest readers who we know will treat every piece sent to us with complete tenderness and prioritize LGBTQ and POC voices. So we’re going to stay on the path we’ve been on because we still believe it’s the right one.

If there’s any misunderstanding, here’s a little cheat sheet for you:

Black Lives Matter

Black Trans Lives Matter

Black Disabled Lives Matter

Black Nonbinary Lives Matter

Black Queer Lives Matter

Love,
Amelia